Alder Gate

Alder Gate is a campaign of primitive D&D that I’m playing with the local teenagers this winter. It’s a pick-up campaign (that is, the group of players changes from session to session) with each session featuring a new adventure. The genre is straightforward sword & sorcery with a light sprinkling of fantasy rpg conventions, such as the existence of an adventurer party. The Creative Agenda is straight Gamism of the challenge-based adventure bent.

This page is here just to group my adventure descriptions under one heading. I write regularly about the adventures in the campaign, using a form of mixed actual play report, module description and GMing commentary – these are pretty useful descriptions if you’re interested in running something similar, or even using the same ideas in your own campaign.

In addition to the adventure episodes below you might be interested in the accompanying blog posts which dealt with various practical issues that went into producing and playing this campaign, such as the rules system, social context and specifics of methodology.

Click for the whole episode

Roots of the Blood Alders was our first adventure. It teaches how to run a simple operative scenario – success of the PCs depends on good advance scouting and resolving some essentially static difficulties of traversing a hostile terrain. There’s also a story about tying a willing player’s character into the backstory and modifying events accordingly.

Click for the whole episode

Grief of the Merchant Prince describes the overall campaign arc and some central NPCs. An useful example of how to deal with important NPCs and their interaction with player characters. Referee neutrality is vital to this style of play, so falling in love with even important NPCs is strictly a no-no.

Wheel of Time (forthcoming) is a puzzle room in a dungeon, based on player problem solving, essentially.

Blue Star Rising (forthcoming) describes a dynamic antagonist for the campaign, and how the player characters might also ally with this cabal of nasty wizards.